Tag Archives: music documentary awards

Oasis are overrated, OK? There, we said it. A pretty good rock ‘n’ roll combo transmogrified by laddish swagger, juicy sibling rivalry, admittedly impressive sneers, and the fortunate timing to emerge coincident with New Labour-ish Cool Brittania (remember that?) into, briefly, the world’s biggest band. So you can count us among those not sent into paroxysms by the news last week, which you probably didn’t miss, that a definitive Oasis documentary is in the works.

At least, you could have if not for the film-to-be’s pedigree, with the Amy/Senna team of Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees set to produce, as initially reported by Screen Daily and Variety. Director Mat Whitecross also knows his way around period-specific music stories, having previously made the Ian Dury biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll and Spike Island, a narrative feature about a bunch of friends trying to blag their way into the epochal 1990 Stone Roses gig referenced in the title.

The filmmakers’ collective track record is enough to get us at least interested, at most potentially excited, about the project, little as we may hunger for the promised “unprecedented,” “candid” access to the inner workings of Noel and Liam Gallagher’s fraternal discord. Continue reading →

We’ve been remiss lately in keeping up with the award winners at the numerous springtime film festivals that pay attention to music documentary. Our lame excuse is that most of them happened while we were on the road and mostly off the work grid in the second half of April (got to Baltimore just in time for the riots!), but, yes, well, that’s lame indeed. Especially since it’s now late May. But on the ICYMI tip, and to help loyal readers fill in their must-see lists for the summer and fall, here’s a roundup of recent honorees from Seeyousound, Hot Docs, the Nashville Film Festival, and CIMMFest, in chronological reverse.

• The inaugural Seeyousound music film fest closed out last weekend in buzzing Turin with the top prize in the Long Play feature doc category going to Kidd Life, which chronicle’s Danish rapper Nicholas Westwood Kidd’s meteoric, YouTube-fueled ascent from unknown b-boy to national celebrity. Andreas Johnsen’s film won praise from the Seeyousound jury for capturing the “complicated relations” between Kidd and his band as stardom and excess beckon and for pondering “the meaning of being an artist in 2014.” Continue reading →

The real lives of unsung back-up singers and the quasi-fictional life of Nick Cave both caught the eyes and ears this year of British Academy of Film and Television Arts voters, who included 20 Feet from Stardom and 20,000 Days on Earth among five nominees for the 2015 documentary BAFTA award. Virunga, Finding Vivian Maier, and frontrunner-for-everything Citizenfour round out the doc nods, announced this morning along with the rest of the BAFTA noms.

The much-acclaimed 20,000 Days didn’t make the 15-strong Oscar doc shortlist but figured to be in the BAFTA mix, given its pedigree: first-time feature directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard are noted English artists; London production house Pulse is behind the film; Cave lives in Brighton and is a bigger deal in Europe than in the States, star-wattage-wise. 20 Feet, of course, won the Academy Award last year but is BAFTA-eligible by virtue of its March 2014 UK theatrical release. Continue reading →

The unorthodox Nick Cave profile 20,000 Days on Earth – which started 2014 winning two awards at Sundance – started 2015 with two prizes from the Cinema Eye Honors, presented in New York last night to honor achievements in nonfiction filmmaking. Cinema Eye’s audience choice award went to another music documentary, Keep on Keepin’ On.

Cinema Eye was inaugurated in 2008 to recognize multiple aspects of documentary production, such as editing and cinematography, as a riposte to the Oscars and other movie awards that only pick an overall best doc. Cave and his Bad Seeds mate Warren Ellis were honored for their original score for 20,000 Days, which incorporates a series of staged scenes and conversations into an exploration of the Aussie alternative icon’s life, work, and creative process. The film’s shooter, Erik Wilson, shared the prize for best cinematography with Franklin Dow and Orlando von Einsiedel of the wildlife/war documentary Virunga, one of two Cinema Eye ties last night. Continue reading →

Awards season already? Like Christmas music at the mall, the clamor of cinematic prize-teasing seems to start earlier every year. The doc-focused Cinema Eye Honors announced their nominations way back on November 12 (at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen), catching me quite unawares – partly because my head’s just not there yet and mainly because I spent mid-November with my cinema eye on the Leeds International Film Festival and its stellar run of music documentary programming. (We did manage to catch one film at Leeds as a civilian, giggling copiously at the Audience Award-winning Kiwi vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows.)

So in case you missed it (like us), or are particularly interested in the music doc angle (like us), the tardy headline is that Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s Nick Cave opus 20,000 Days on Earth is among the most Cinema Eyed films of the year, with five nominations, including the Best Picture-equivalent Outstanding Nonfiction Feature. That put 20,000 Days in the top tier with Laura Poitras’ Edward Snowden doc Citizenfour (six noms) and Life Itself, Steve James’ loving portrait of Roger Ebert (five). The awards will be doled out January 7 in New York.

As the Cinemas Eyes are presented by and for doc makers, this should put to rest the question – put to me and Marc Smolowitz, producer of the Elliott Smith bio Heaven Adores You, at a Leeds film fest Q&A – of whether the partially staged but indisputably not fictional 20,000 Days on Earth is in fact a documentary. Continue reading →